378 
NATURE 
But these bodies, perhaps from their simple structure, appear to 
be adapted to attack all parts of the animal organisation, and 
they are apt to affect the nervous system and circulation. In 
order to avoid these disadvantages, various attempts have been 
made to obtain bodies of a similar but more complicated struc- 
ture, which should have a more specialised action, and would 
lower the temperature while leaving the nervous system and 
circulation unaffected. These attempts have been more or less 
successful,and we owe to them the introduction of three new 
remedies—kairin, thallin, and antipyrin. The former two, after 
a brief period of trial, have been found more or less_unsatisfac- 
tory; but the latter is perhaps, upon the whole, the best anti- 
pyretic that we possess, reducing the temperature and, at the 
same time, having few disadvantages. Salicylate of soda is 
nearly allied in chemical constitution to resorcin, and as a gene- 
ral antipyretic it is almost equal to antipyrin, and superior to it in 
cases of rheumatic fever. It is possible that we may still obtain 
antipyretics more powerful than any we yet possess, and specially 
adapted to the febrile conditions arising from different causes, 
for these antipyretics do not appear to be equally successful 
in different kinds of fever. Antipyrin is. best in hectic fever, 
and salicylate of soda in rheumatic fever, but an antipyretic 
which will be thoroughly satisfactory in typhoid fever is still a 
desideratum, 
[ have said that antipyrin is generally free from any disagree- 
able action ; but this is not always so, for it sometimes may 
produce collapse. This shows us that in the action of all our 
drugs we have two factors to consider, namely, the drug itself 
and the body into which we introduce it. We have just been 
considering the alterations in physiological action which may be 
produced by changes in the chemical constitution of our drugs ; 
but there is another factor which is perhaps more difficult to 
investigate, and still more important in the treatment of disease, 
namely, the condition of our patients. The failure of our drugs 
to produce the effects we desire is one.of the most trying oceur- 
rences in medical practice. Thus, in fever, we sometimes find 
that drugs will not reduce the pulse as they do in non-febrile 
conditions. and digitalis in. pneumonia sometimes appears to 
have lost its sedative action on the heart altogether. Some 
years ago L thought that. possibly this: might be due to the high 
temperature producing paralysis of the nervous apparatus which 
restrains the heart, and supposed that the peripheral ends of the 
vagus in the:heart might be paralysed. L then made some ex- 
periments, which showed that I was wrong in. this supposition. 
Several years afterwards my friend Dr. Cash.and I made some 
further experiments, which showed that the failure of digitalis 
to slow the heart in febrile conditions is really due to paralysis 
of the regulating nerves of the heart; but the part of them 
which is paralysed by the heat is their roots in the medulla, and 
not their endings in the heart. 
In other experiments which we made together we found that 
the muscle of a frog poisoned by barium could be restored to 
its normal condition by a high temperature, and also by the 
application of potash salts. It occurred to us that, if we could 
saturate the bedy of an animal with potassium, we should be 
able to render it proof against the poisonous action of barium. 
On trying this, we succeeded in rendering animals so far resistant 
to the action of the poison that they were alive and well after 
animals of similar size, but unprotected, had succumbed to the 
action of the same dose of poison, although we did not succeed 
in ultimately saving the animals. 
But Dr. Cash has pursued this line of investigation far beyond 
the limits of our mutual research, and he has obtained results 
which seem to me to be amongst the most extraordinary and the 
most promising in pharmacology. Knowing, as he did, that 
corrosive sublimate was an exceedingly powerful disinfectant, it 
occurred to him that it might be more harmful to disease-germs 
than to the bodies of higher animals, and that he might be able, 
by the introduction of the poison into the body of an animal, 
to render it insusceptible to zymotic diseases. A similar idea 
had occurred to Koch, who injected corrosive sublimate into 
animals after previously inoculating them with anthrax ; but his 
experiments failed, while Cash has proved successful by intro- 
ducing the corrosive sublimate before inoculating with anthrax, 
and thus giving the drug the start of the disease. These experi- 
ments acquire an additional interest from the fact that M. 
Pasteur, although uncertain regarding the exact mode in which 
his process of inoculation for hydrophobia has brought about 
such satisfactory results, is disposed to think that the agent which 
prevents the disease is a chemical substance, and not a microbe. 
[August 19, 1886 
When we look back for twenty years and see how far pharma- 
cology has advanced since Crum Brown and Fraser’s experiments 
directed it intoa new path, we may hope that twenty years more 
may not only have greatly added to our stock of new remedies, 
but will have enabled us so to ascertain the condition of our 
patients that, either by the proper modification of a single 
remedy, by the proper admixture of remedies, or by proper 
changes in the food or surroundings of each patient, we may 
insure the action we desire, and we shall not have to feel, as we 
painfully do at the present, that our patients often die for lack 
of knowledge, not on our part, but on that of our art. 
Nothing is more painful to a medical man than having to 
answer in the negative the agonised appeal, ‘‘Oh, doctor, cat 
you do nothing?” of those who see passing away friends who 
are dearer to them than their own life. It is because we medical 
men know the value of human life and the extent of human 
suffering ; because we are called upon to prolong the lives of 
those whom not only their friends but their country and the 
world at large can ill spare; because we must, if possible, 
relieve pain sometimes amounting to extreme torture in the 
sufferers themselves, and felt hardly less keenly by their friends, 
that we consider it is not only permissible, but is our imperative 
duty to gain the knowledge we require to attain our object, even 
though we sacrifice the lives of animals, and inflict upon them. 
some pain—never wantonly, never carelessly, and almost always 
slight in comparison with what we often see our patients feel. | 
Moreover, the lower animals suffer from disease as well as men, 
and we may hope that the advance of pharmacology will give 
us the means of relieving pain and prolonging life in them as 
well as in man. 
SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 
Fournal de Physique, June.—P. Garbe, experimental re- 
searches on radiation. Examination of the formulze proposed 
by Dulong and Petit, by E. Becquerel, by Violle, and by Stefan. 
The author holds Stefan’s law to be true for absolutely black 
bodies only. The verifications have been made by spectro- 
photometric measures of glow-lamps fed from ‘accumulators.— 
G. Wyrouboff, the structure of crystalline bodies endowed with 
rotatory power. This is a remarkable paper, traversing several 
conclusions hitherto believed to be proven. The author states 
that the alleged necessary and constant relation between rotatory 
power and the existence of facets indicating non-superposable 
hemihedry is untrue, for of eighteen such substances known, 
only four have been proved to have such facets, while the nitrates 
of lead and of baryta which are cubie with facets of this kind 
have no rotatory power. The author now propounds the view, 
which he supports by the discovery of striated. structures upon 
the facets in question and by various strong arguments, that the’ 
real physical cause of this rotatory power is that such crystals 
consist of superposed laiminz crossing at different angles, and 
possessing biaxial refraction. In fact, he holds that these sub- 
stances are only pseudo-symmetrical, and that the built-up mica 
plates of Reusch which show rotatory power are actual types of 
the phenomenon in general. He particularly refers to the 
optical behaviour of amethyst, and further declares that he 
has succeeded in proving; that the true crystalline form of 
sulphate of quinine is clinorhombic. He regards as absolutely 
illusory, in the vast majority of cases, the so-called measurement 
of the angle of rotation by these substances.—L. Laurent, practical 
methods for the execution of objectives intended for instruments 
of precision. This paper describes means for testing during 
process of manufacture the curvatures, &c., of lenses intended 
for spectroscopes, goniometers, and such instruments. —Th. and 
A. Duboscq, saccharimeter for white light. 
analyser. The Senarmont polariscope consists of four wedges of 
quartz disposed so as to show two fringes with black central band, 
which in the dark field are situated exactly in line with one 
another. On introducing any substance that rotates the plane 
of polarisation, the fringes move right and left. A quartz com- 
pensator is added.—J. Voisenat, influence of nature and form of 
conductors upon the self-induction of an electric current. A 
summary of the recent papers of Hughes and H. F. Weber.— 
K. Angstrom, on the diffusion of radiant heat from plane sur- 
faces.—Ch. Soret, researches on the refraction and the disper- 
sion of the crystallised alums.—E. Wartmann, the compensated 
rheolyser. This instrument consists of a circular modification of 
Wheatstone’s bridge with mercurial conductors.—R. Pictet, 
This saccharimeter _ 
_has a Senarmont polariscope placed between the polariser and 
‘ 
Po ee ee 
ee eee eee ee 
